Munich again

In the morning, we had the unpleasant task of figuring out how to get to Stockholm by Saturday morning to meet Mike (Jeremy's friend visiting from home to go to a computer graphics festival). We finally decided on an overnight (and almost 24-hour total train ride) departing at 10pm and thus had a day to kill in Munich. This is how this blog finally got updated (yay)! More as the day goes on..

Change of plans!

We had planned to go to Copenhagen from Hamburg, but the hostel/hotel prices there were pretty steep, especially after all our time in Eastern Europe. Since the weather to the north looked rainy and neither of us really cared much about the stop in Copenhagen (we had heard it described as "super cool and trendy" so many times that we guessed we wouldn't like it), we decided at the last minute to head south back to Munich and enjoy one more beer garden before leaving Germany.

It was on the way to the grocery store and the train station that we finally found the area of Hamburg that we could enjoy. A nice, cheap, friendly shopping street lined with kabab places and supermarkets. I think we may have enjoyed the city much more if we had walked in this direction first..

After an uneventful 5 hour train ride, we arrived back in Munich. We returned to the same camp ground we had stayed in before, repaired our tent to its best condition in weeks, and set up camp. Then we went out to the beer garden where we had the terrible credit card confusion the week before. This time it all worked out much better. Every table in the huge garden was filled with people, and we eventually found a spot on a picnic table next to a group of Germans who happened to be joined by a student from San Diego and were thus speaking English. We played cards, made sandwiches, and drank a couple of steins of beer as the sun set over the park.

Hamburg (Becky)

We decided to make a short stop in Hamburg, Germany, largely because our German friends recommended it as one of their favorite cities. After a morning in our hostel trying to figure out housing in Scandinavia (it’s pricey!), we finally set out for an early afternoon train ride to Hamburg, arriving around 5 pm and too late for any free walking tours.

One of the strange things about German cities is that they are almost all brand new. Everything is from 1950 or later. Most cities were reconstructed in a mix of modern architecture and replicas of historical buildings. In Hamburg, the newness was a bit overwhelming. We walked through the shopping area (which looked to me like a mix of Paris and Portland, if you can imagine that - all new but trying to look older), and soon we were in an area of Rolex watch stores and expensive restaurants. We kept walking in hopes of finding affordable dinner, but couldn't seem to escape the countless fancy malls and shops. We eventually made our way to the ports and the heavily Portuguese-influenced area. This was where it started raining, and we ducked into an Italian restaurant for a pizza (the cheapest food in the area, if not the city). In the restaurant, we were seated next to a toddler in a high chair who got great joy out of turning to us and saying "HALLO!!!" then waiting for a response. The first few times it was charming, but the kid didn't stop - just kept staring and saying hello (and occasionally other things in German that we couldn't understand). It was quite the distraction.

All this wandering convinced us that Hamburg was too ritzy for our budget. We headed back to our hostel, played drinking games with cheap wine we'd bought in Berlin, and quietly watched some MTV (with German subtitles) while our dormmates slept.

Berlin walking tour

We took a fantastic free walking tour that took up most of the day. We saw all the famous Berlin sites – the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, a piece of the Berlin wall, the Jewish Memorial, etc. I’m leaving a space here for Jeremy to fill in some interesting/historical tidbits from the tour, because he hasn’t written anything for awhile. If this remains blank, blame him.

Fine, fine, I’ll write something. The tour guide jumped around mostly between the Nazi and Stalinist eras of Berlin’s history. Regarding the former, the modern German government explicitly highlights the victims rather than a perpetrators of WWII and the Holocaust. The Jewish memorial is composed of thousands of concrete pillars, roughly the size of coffins, but ranging from just off the ground to several meters high, arranged in a large grid. While no official symbolism is present, walking through this provided an impressive feeling of disorientation (some of the blocks slant in, others out, and change hights sporatically), entering a dense, man-made forest, and being separated. Becky and I took different paths through and there was an interesting effect where you would see each other for a moment and then a turn would separate us and we would be alone again. This provoked thoughts of how loved ones were separated in the camps and would have only seen each other in glimpses if at all. It was a very well done memorial.

Below that architectural exhibit was a small museum highlighting families from all over Europe decimated by the holocaust along with post cards and letters written from within ghettos or, in one case, thrown off a train going to a death camp by Jewish people who did not survive. This provided a more personal look back at the individuals affected during this time that complimented our earlier visit to the Dachau concentration camp.In contrast to that large and very noticeable memorial, the place where Hilter’s bunkers were located was under a run-down parking lot with a small sign. Our guide said that Berliners often take their dogs on walks by this spot to “do their business.” A bit later, we passed by a building that had stood during the war which was pock-marked with bullet holes left over from the Soviet invasion of Berlin.

The Stalinist era was not much more pleasant for East Berlin, and there was an interesting set of murals showing the dichotomy of real life versus contemporary government propaganda. One original mural (on the side of the Luftwaffe building converted into an East German governmental ministry showed the German people happily going to the horse races, working in a factory, and generally enjoying life. On the square in front, a photograph of the same size (maybe 2x10 meters) shows people protesting in a failed uprising from the 50’s who were killed during the conflict.

After the tour, we contemplated going on a pub crawl, but determined that it wasn’t a very good deal (and that we didn’t really care). Instead, we went back to the hostel pretty early again to have dinner and try to do laundry. But, of course, the Laundromat was 30 minutes away from closing when I got there, so that got postponed until the next morning. We just sat around the hostel instead, reading and trying to plan.

Trains and waiting around.. (Becky)

We took a loooong train ride on Saturday. That’s pretty much it. We made sandwiches on the train, found a copy of The Economist on the train, and read books on the train. Exciting.

When we got to our hostel in Berlin, no one was there to greet us. We called the number listed on the door and got no response, so we grumpily sat on the street with our packs and waited. Finally, another guest opened the door and let us in, assuring us that the owner would show up. And that the owner was gay, a stickler for cleanliness, and kind of a weird guy. Other guests arriving later shared the same observations about the owner. Finally, two boring hours later, the owner showed up and gave us our beds. We had been planning to go out to a crazy techno dance party (this is my stereotype of what people do in Berlin), but by this point I was too tired to do much of anything and we just crashed for the night. While we watched online television and mellowed out, our hostel owner was running around, playing music, and dyeing his hair. He asked if anyone else wanted to dye their hair black “like a Spanish boy,” and one of the Canadian backpackers agreed – so the owner cheerfully cut and dyed his hair in the hostel bathroom. Jeremy refused to dye his hair black, unfortunately..

Brewery Tour! (Becky)

We set this day aside to visit the Pilsner Urquell brewery in a town near Prague. Jeremy could talk much more intelligently about it, but what I gathered was that it was the birthplace of Pilsner style beer. Our train (which had a final destination in Nurmburg, Germany) was packed with people, and most of the seats were reserved. Jeremy had the presence of mind to snatch a spot in the hallway where extra fold down seats were, so we were able to sit at least. A large group of British backpackers near u s were not so lucky, and wound up sitting on the floor throughout the car and the hallways. The train was (of course) then delayed repeatedly for a cumulative 1.5 hours. Oh, and did I mention that there was no air conditioning, although the windows thankfully opened and it was rather cool outside so it wasn’t the hottest train ride we’d had.

We arrived in Pilsner just 10 minutes before the last tour of the day and rushed the few blocks to the Pilsner Urquell plant, arriving just in time to join the tour. The tour itself was pretty cool and included a section in a rotating theater, which was completely unnecessary but really amusing. There were also free samples of a “special brew” at the end (yay) but they were out of big cups when we got there and got small cups that only held half as much as the others got (boo). After the tour, we took a relatively empty and uneventful 2 hour train ride back to Prague, got Chinese food (where we accidentally ordered meaty spring rolls, much to our disappointment), and spent the rest of the evening planning our Berlin stay at the hostel.

Walking walking walking (Becky)

We walked a lot on Wednesday. We didn’t manage to get off our butts and out of the hostel until 1pm, but after that was almost constant movement. We skipped breakfast and instead got cheap Chinese food nearby (like 2 euros per plate). Something very strange happened at the Chinese restaurant: some sort of pressurized gas tank exploded in a van in front of the restaurant There was a pop and a loud fizzing noise, and then out back of the van sprayed a misty cloud of gas. The van was labeled all in Czech with “Bomby” written on the side, so we were naturally a little worried (we later deduced that this probably means “delivery”). And the Chinese waitresses looked genuinely terrified, as if a bomb had exploded. So everyone on the outside terrace cautiously moved into the building, the waitresses covered their mouths and noses with napkins, and some people with kids moved as far back as possible into the restaurant. About ten of us just stood in the doorway quizzically until we saw a man casually walk up into the spraying fumes, look into the trunk, and close the back doors of the van. Taking this as a sign that it wasn’t dangerous, we all moved back to our seats and cautiously continued to eat. The van owner laughed and said something in Czech to us all that, based on his hand gestures, probably translated to “it’s not dangerous because it all disperses into the air.” Another guy made a joke that, again based on hand gestures, said “so I’ll just light my cigarette now then!” And everyone laughed nervously while eyeing him to make sure that he didn’t actually make a spark.

After that adventure calmed down, we walked around taking in the sights – the famous Charles Bridge that is the main Prague landmark, the touristy areas around the bridges, the Old Town central area of Prague, etc. We went in search of a bagel shop that had been advertised as a great place for internet, but after a long walk we found that they actually didn’t have wifi at all and their terminal computers were something like 4 euros per hour. So we didn’t bother to stay and set out wandering again, eventually snaking our way back to our hostel to get warmer clothes, and then back out to the central square to catch a Ghost Tour. Prague is famous for its ghost stories, and there are many creepy pictures of its gothic architecture and bridges engulfed in an eerie mist. The tour, however, was not as creepy as expected. Our guide was a woman speaking in stilted English, wearing a top hat and dark eyeliner, and carrying an umbrella. We chose her over another tour that was led a bored looking girl in a dark hood, and a third tour led by a man in a top hat without an umbrella. We may have made the wrong choice, though, as our guide started out the tour by telling us all about the “ghost orbs” that appear in people’s photos and urging us to take pictures and find ghosts. We, of course, all did find orbs (presumably due to the lighting or the dust in the area rather than ghosts, but who knows). She led us to a door with bear carvings that looked gold in photos but not in the dimly lit street (ok..) and had us take pictures of a hooded statue that was supposed to sometimes show the face of Mozart’s father in photos. She also told us a few creepy stories about the city, including the one that seems to be most classic: A man went to one of the local cathedrals to steal money and jewels. As he took gold off of the statue of the Virgin Mary, the statue grabbed his hands and refused to let go. When the priest found him, there was nothing he could do to free the man except to cut off his arm. After this happened, the statue dropped the hand and moved back to its original position, and the man was able to go free (but armless). The arm was then hung in the church as a joint symbol of the miracle of the statue coming to life and the punishment of stealing from the church, and the bones still hang there today hundreds of years later. It’s an interesting story, but not very creepy..

After the tour, we joined a huge group of tourists that had been inexplicably drawn to what appeared to be a typical street band. We watched for a few songs, then moved on. We visited the bridges again in the dark, but they were still not so creepy as the famous photographs and postcards. Exhausted from the day of walking, we finally went back to the hostel and (after a couple of 11 czk (40 cent) beers) crashed at the hostel. During the night, our dorm filled with its other inhabitants, who almost instantly gave it that familiar scent of college dorm rooms and binge drinking boys.

Train confusion, going to Prague, getting lost (Becky)

We finally left Budapest on Tuesday to head for Prague. At the train station, we checked again for Jeremy’s missing iPod, but had no success. The guy in the baggage area seemed to only vaguely understand us when we said “Lost iPod.. on Railjet train.. like this..” and showed him my iPod as illustration. He then took my iPod and held on to it saying “Ah, Railjet. Yes.” We stared at him, me starting to panic that he would put my iPod in a luggage hold somewhere. He must have seen my anxiety, because he then said something in Hungarian that I guess translated to “This is yours?” and handed it back to me. So we tried again with “Yes.. We had another like this. On the train. Lost on the train,” which only got a laugh and a “oh, no no. Not here.” And we gave up. The iPod may be there, or at one of the train’s other locations, or still under the seat in the first class car.. we will never know.. We also realized while waiting for our train that it would pass ever so slightly into Slovakia, which wasn’t covered by our rail passes. Probably wouldn’t have been a problem, but we didn’t want to deal with the stress, so we hopped a train back to Vienna instead in hopes of finding a connection from there to Budapest.

In Vienna, we learned that we were at the wrong train station, and then took a one hour walking adventure to get from the Western station to the Southern station. We waited another hour, then a 15 minute delay, and then finally we caught a train heading towards Prague. We were scheduled to get in late, 11:30 pm, but by the time our delayed train finally arrived it was after midnight. The area around the station in Prague was pretty sketchy, with some drunk guys yelling and mocking us (I think.. we ignored them), homeless guys sleeping everywhere, and lots of people walking muzzled dogs. We came out of the station in the wrong place and got all turned around looking for the start of our directions, then got lost because the streets were only sporadically labeled. When we finally got to our hostel, it was well after 1:00 am, and no one answered the hostel’s doorbell. A note on the door said “REBECCA CALL THIS NUMBER” with a phone number, so we dialed it on our cell phone and were told to wait there until the hostel owner came from home. So, 15 minutes after that, she finally arrived, complained that she had just gone to bed, and showed us to our room. Woo.

Lazy day in Budapest (Becky)

We decided to stay in Budapest for an extra day, since it was cheap, comfortable, and fun. We upgraded to a low priced apart-hotel, which turned out to really be an apartment, complete with a kitchen, couch, and balcony. Luxurious. We spent a little of the day walking around near the hotel, but we spent most of our time just cooking in the big kitchen and drinking a 2 liter plastic bottle of white wine (pictured here) that cost roughly $2. I love Budapest.

Budapest bath labyrinth (Becky)

More than anything else on this day, we reveled in the joy of stores being open on Sundays. Some groceries were even open 24 hours. It was amazing, especially after our previous Sunday in France with absolutely nothing to do.

We spent most of the day at one of Budapest’s famous baths. These spas get their water from hot springs under the city, and have hot baths at up to 40 degrees Celsius (about body temperature). The spa itself was a confusing labyrinth, with rooms and rooms of different temperature baths, lockers, changing rooms, showers, saunas, and an outdoor pool. After changing in our individual boy / girl bathrooms, Jeremy and I had an agreement to meet “wherever we come out.” It turned out, though, that the girls had to retrace their steps into the biggest locker room, and it wasn't clear where the boys went. I paced around there for a while, with no idea how to get through to the actual baths. Finally, I started to worry and get lost, so I got advice in broken English to go out a certain door. This door opened into a bunch of small hot baths, with Jeremy nowhere to be found. Thinking that he may have gone out through another door to the outdoor section (which was our planned first location), I started wandering and looking for a door to the outside. Instead, I found room after room after room of pools and half-naked Hungarians. I did this for what felt like an eternity in a terrible anxiety dream, and finally I went back out to the locker room to find Jeremy patiently waiting there.

Anyway, I was too panicky to enjoy myself at first, but Jeremy relaxed in one of the 38 degree pools. In the outdoor area, there were three small swimming pools, each a different temperature, and this was the hottest. It was a comfortable temperature, but didn’t really curb my anxiety – it only made me tired and lethargic. After a while in there, we transitioned to the cooler 26 degree pool, which was a lot more fun. Instead of people just sitting around staring blankly like in the warmest pool, this one had a few things to do. There were water jets shooting out under our feet, and a great section where the jets pushed people around and around in a circular area. Much more my style. We also tried out a sauna, but it was crowded and uncomfortable so we didn’t last long. We were shocked to see that other saunas went up as high as 80 degrees Celsius, so hot that there were health warnings posted all around them.

After the bath, we tried to go to a nearby amusement park, but the admission price was too high. We instead treated ourselves to a Hungarian snack called Langos, which is essentially deep-fried dough with toppings (we got a delicious cheese and garlic one). In the evening, we tried again to go to the Chain Bridge Festival. This time, it was open and lively. We had been promised traditional Hungarian folk music, but instead were treated to a swing band singing mostly American songs. A group of people near us turned out to be a club of swing dancers, so we enjoyed watching them do the Lindy Hop and the Charleston and probably tons of other dances that I didn’t recognize.

Budapest tour and storms (Becky)

For breakfast, we searched out a place selling Hungarian pancakes, which were a lot like crepes. They had a huge variety of fillings, so we got a bunch of everything from cinnamon, to strawberry, to Nutella and banana, to apple-poppy. They were mostly delicious, except for the apple-poppy. It was literally filled half with apple and half with crushed poppyseeds. It was not good.

We spent the rest of the day on a walking tour of the city. Our guide was a nice (although somewhat repetitive, wordy, and nervous) native of Budapest. We saw some of the architecture on the Pest side of the river, then walked along the famous Chain Bridge over to the Buda side (Buda and Pest were individual cities before they joined into Budapest soon after this bridge was built). There was supposed to be a “Chain Bridge Festival” going on with arts and crafts, food, and music, but when we walked past all the tents were closing down because of an approaching storm. We then saw the Buda Castle, which towers over the city on a big hill. It was here that the rain started, and we took shelter inside a small exhibition on the history of the castle. This is also where our guide got wordy – he had an hour of tour left but couldn’t take us back out in the rain, so he slowly walked through the exhibition and explained Budapest’s history at length. I couldn’t focus on anything except the cool mountaintop view of the storm outside, but I’m sure that I could have learned something interesting there.

Once the rain cleared up and our tour guide stopped talking, we headed back to our hostel to cook lunch and change into warmer clothes (the storm brought cold temperatures as well as rain). We learned a life lesson during the course of this day: In Hungary, the pastries are never as good as they look. In the morning, we had the not-so-good poppyseed pancakes. And then at night, we bought some delicious looking pastries at the grocery store, but they had turned out to be doughy and strange tasting. Disappointing!

We had planned to go back to the clubs on the island, but the cold wet weather lowered our ambition. We decided to watch a few episodes of American television shows online while deciding whether to go out or not. Before we knew it, we had watched two week’s worth of The Daily Show and our roommates were coming home from the club already, so we gave up on going out..

Budapest, American movies, and clubbing (Becky)

The next day we ended our short stay in Vienna and took a train out to Budapest. Our car of the train, fitting with our usual luck, had no air conditioning and was unbearably hot. The women near us started to complain, and several rail attendants came though, and then one told us to get up and leave the car. Confused, we followed the group, and then realized that we were relocated to first class. Nice. Unfortunately, Jeremy’s iPod disappeared between the spacious first class seats as we left the train, and we forgot about it until we were off and the train had pulled away from the station. We went to the information desk, and after about 5 minutes of confusion trying to explain in simple language what we had lost and where, we were told to wait while they checked with the cleaning crew and the lost and found. Eventually they told us that the iPod was nowhere to be found, but left it open that we may be able to try again a few days later to see if it happened to turn up somewhere. So we gave up on that and headed for our hostel.

The hostel was almost impossible to find (we actually went to the wrong one first) and was on a street that was under construction and thus looked like it had been recently bombed. The hostel itself was fine, except that we had been overbooked for our room. The 4-bed room already had two groups of British girls in the beds, so we were offered a fold out couch and a small cushion couch that the hostel owner quietly said was the one he normally slept on himself. Sad! He must have wound up sleeping in his office chair that night.

The online Budapest travel guide listed a few places that showed movies in English, so we decided to spend our first night in Budapest in the most cultural way possible – at an American movie. We saw Public Enemies, which was doubly nice for me because it was filmed near home in Wisconsin, and we enjoyed an enormous American-sized popcorn and Pepsi Light combo. Yum.

After the movie, we headed towards Margaret Island, an island park on the Danube that we overheard our hostel owner recommending to some girls who wanted to go clubbing. The island was very cool – it was a natural park and preserve, with some small loud clubs mixed in along the path. And the bridge to get there had a beautiful view of the city, with the huge Buda Castle and Parliament buildings all lit up. We went to one open air club (no cover either! This place was amazing!), accidently ordered an expensive drink, and then danced with other people who seemed equally awkward and underdressed. It was fantastic. After a little dancing, we wandered the rest of the island and got a beer in a mini beer garden in the middle of the park. We then vowed to come back the next night and headed back to the hostel.

Mini golf, movies, and mosquitoes in Vienna (Becky)

We spent the day exploring Vienna on foot. We didn’t have a map, so we relied on Jeremy’s memory of the map at the hostel. Needless to say, we wound up a little off course. But we didn’t get totally lost. We walked to the museum district at the center of the city and admired the architecture and parks. We walked to the Opera, which was a beautiful building and had been recommended by our friends in Germany, but we couldn’t exactly figure out what was playing that evening or how to get tickets (I think there was nothing playing, but I’m not sure..).

We then walked out the famous Praten Park, which is home to a giant ferris wheel that is often used to represent Vienna. It turns out that it was not only a ferris wheel, but a whole amusement park with small roller coasters, a bunch of spinning rides, carnival games, and all your other favorites. The prices for the rides were a little outrageous (4 euros for a small roller coaster), but the nearby mini golf was dirt cheap – we paid 2.50 each for 18 holes of mini golf. Jeremy won by about 2 swings, but it was good competition.

Since we couldn’t figure out how to see the real opera, we decided to do the next best thing and go to the open air Rathhaus Film Festival to see a movie of the Berlin Philharmonic playing Mozart. It was a beautiful setting, with the screen set up just outside of the Rathaus building in a big park. We watched the first concert, then sat in the grass nearby and played cards as a second concert played. As it got darker, though, the mosquitos started swarming– I got about 20 bites on my feet alone (my only exposed skin except for my face and hands), including the soles of my feet. So uncomfortable!

Tent disaster! (Becky)

In the early morning it rained heavily, and our tent slowly collapsed in on itself again. We got to the point where the tent was resting against our noses (although it was more open by our feet). I began to panic that we would suffocate (since being under a big plastic tarp is roughly equivalent to wrapping your face in a thick plastic bag, right? ), and got up early. I failed at a tent repair and eventually just packed up the half-usable tent to try to fix it later. On the bright side of this disaster, it woke us up early enough to join the free city tour that left from our campground at 9:30. Jeremy went, but I decided to relax at the campground and play on the internet (free wifi!). Jeremy could tell you lots of interesting things about the city, I’m sure, but you’d have to talk to him... In the afternoon we went back to central Munich and enjoyed some beer and snacks in a central market/beer garden. Jeremy showed me some of the famous sites that he learned about on the tour on the back to the train station, and then we caught a train out to Vienna, where we arrived late and crashed at our hostel.

Memorials and beer garden mishaps(Becky)

We went out to see the Dauchau Concentration Camp memorial in the suburbs of Munich. It’s hard to describe how sad and overwhelming it is unless you've seen it, so I'm not going to go into much detail. Perhaps the most striking thing about it was that the memorial was in a bright residential neighborhood, with kids playing loudly just outside the entrance. It which was a strange juxtaposition with all the tragic events that had taken place so nearby.

In the evening, we did laundry and then headed out late in the evening to find a recommended beer garden. It was in a cool location in a large park, with tons of tables and people sitting nearby in the grass. However, we then realized that we were out of cash, and it was very unclear if we could use credit cards. We asked for directions to an ATM and were sent to a square 15 minutes away that we somehow didn’t make it to in a massive miscommunication. So we went back to the garden and tried to use our card anyway, but they told us we had to sit at a table and get service. So we sat at a table just as the stands started closing down for the night, and we didn’t have a tablecloth (which we learned later that you need in order to be served), so we didn’t get any beer. Eventually we got unbearably frustrated and confused, so we just headed back to the campground..

Munich (Becky)

In the morning we bought some French books to read over the rest of the trip, and then spent most of the day on the train between Strasbourg and Munich.

We walked around the area near the train station in Munich, which consisted mostly of Arabic immigrants and university neighborhoods, and then tried to find a classic beer garden. We mixed up the directions a bit, but did find a brewery with a small beer garden that we sat in. After some confusion with our non-English-speaking server, we got a nice big mug of beer and a basket of bread with some sort of cheese spread. We then took a tram line out to the campsite on the outskirts of the city (after a lot of confusion buying tram tickets with an extremely complicated system and a German-only speaking metro ticket agent – it turned out in the end that we didn’t need the tram tickets at all since they never checked – we never even validated them and just carried them on all the other trams without paying again). We camped in a large hostel/campground called simply “The Tent.” It included two big white tents, one with 50+ bunk beds and one with people just sleeping all over on the floor. We had been planning to sleep on the floor, but on seeing it we changed our mind – people were sleeping just everywhere and very close together. So we decided to set up our own little tent on the campground instead. Our hastily repaired tent (it had partially collapsed in Amsterdam) caved in again this evening, and we had to borrow duct tape to prop it back up and make it through the night.

Sundays in France are boring, but Kehl is nice! (Becky)

We decided to stay another day in Strasbourg, because we hadn’t really seen the city yet (and, as I mentioned, our hotel room was quite swanky, and we weren’t prepared to leave the luxury of having a kitchen and space to ourselves. The hotel was also oddly charming because it looked like it had been thrown together halfhazardly, with the kitchen sink knobs too close to the wall to turn, a shower that flooded out past its flimsy curtain, and the fantastic artwork pictured here).

It turned out to be a Sunday in France, though. We had forgotten the terror of this day. Every shop was closed. We went to the train station information desk to ask if they knew any grocery stores that would be open, but the information worker onreplied with a laugh that “Non! Il n’y a pas rien!!” (No there are none!). Downtrodden, we walked around for a while and went to the few open convenience stores looking for something to cook in our hotel kitchen, but we didn’t have much luck.

So we decided instead to take the train back to Kehl, Germany in hopes of finding something that was actually open (and I still needed postcards). Kehl was closed down almost as much as Strasbourg, but did have a very nice park on the Rhein River that we explored. The highlights of the park were a couple of strange items– a huge log with holes in it and a sign attributing the holes to "Unidentified Forestrial Objects” and a large flying saucer that you could go inside, and that of course held information about flowers and local plants. The park also had an obstacle course, some treehouses, and a tall tower from which you could see the whole town and the closer parts of Strasbourg. And there was an awesome mosquito slide in the center of town!

In the evening, we went back to Strasbourg and headed to a celebration that we had seen advertised on billboards. Something about fireworks and water spectacles. We didn’t quite understand what it was, but I was in need of some belated July 4 fireworks, and we were planning to leave the country just before Bastille Day, so it seemed like a good compromise. We got lost on the way there, and arrived just after the celebration started. It turned out that it was a fountain show in the river, kind of like the Bilaggio fountains in Las Vegas. It was set to the music of famous composers and was supposed to somehow represent the history of Strasbourg. They soon added fireworks to the water show, which made for a cool effect for about 5 minutes, and then the smoke was too thick to see the water fountains anymore. We were disappointed that there was no big grand finale (it ended with some low fast fireworks), but it was still pretty cool.

Europa Park!! (Becky)

We spent the day at Europa Park, a big amusement park on the border of France and Germany that divides itself into sections by European nations. We rode all but one of the roller coasters and a bunch of the other rides.

The highlights:
- A space-themed ride that was a copycat of Space Mountain and traveled inside of what looked like the Epcot dome. Unlike the American version, though, it had pumping techno music and tons of cool laser effects.
- A ride themed around the Mir space station (in the Russian section of the park), which was a lot like the Space Mountain ride at first, with crazy techno and lasers, then opened up into spinning cars around big mirrored pillars.
- A roller coaster that our German friends said was the tallest in Europe..or something like that. We couldn’t figure out if it was still the tallest, but it was pretty tall and impressively fast.
- Super elaborate boat rides for each region of the park, including an expansive pirate set-up and a Russian scene that looked like the “It’s a Small World” ride
- Prices that weren’t absolutely crazy – we got lunch for both of us for like 7 euros. This is no Six Flags.
-The lines too were impressively short – no wait longer than 40 minutes, and very efficient boarding/unboarding.
- Tasty deep-fried doughnuts and cotton candy…

The town of Kehl (Becky)

We left Frankfurt early Friday afternoon and headed for Strasbourg. On the way, we stopped in the town of Kehl to see the hypothetical home of my ancestors (my mom’s maiden name is Kehl, but we have no idea if the family is actually from the town of Kehl). Kehl is a cute town of about 30,000 people, with a central shopping district and some nice parks. The scenery looked a lot like Wisconsin, , so I can understand how my hypothetical ancestors would have felt comfortable moving from Germany to Wisconsin. (We went back to Kehl a few days later - more details there).

Anyway, that was pretty much all we did this day - we then traveled from there to Strasbourg, bought groceries, and cooked dinner in the kitchen (!) of our swanky hotel room while watching some sort of weird French talent show on TV (complete with magicians, acrobats, and jugglers).

Relaxing day around Frankfurt (Jeremy)

The first day in Frankfurt, we woke up late to a breakfast of croissants and jams laid out for us. (Wow!) We took advantage of a free washer and did laundry, completely filling the laundry room with hanging clothes in the process. In the afternoon, we went for a walk up to the nearby town of Oberursel, bought some tasty candies (mmm… Ritter Sport and Haribo…) and generally enjoyed not having to worry about anything travel related. On our way back, we ran into Helena and she chauffeured us back to the house and another delicious dinner. That day, their son Dominic had arrived home from university in Switzerland after having to remain an extra day cleaning his apartment up to Swiss standards (apparently quite high and the exact opposite of how most college apartments are left back home).

After dinner, we went jogging with Dominic up into the forest nearby and came out into a field overlooking the Frankfurt skyline, which is quite impressive despite many assertions that it’s not impressive by American standards. Frankfurt is home to the headquarters of many European banks, the European Central Bank (like the Fed for controlling the Euro), and other financial firms that all feel the need for skyscrapers. As a side note, this short jog disabused me of the notion that I had become fit on the trip…

Arriving in Frankfurt (Jeremy)

The next day we took a 4-hour train from Amsterdam to Frankfurt, Germany, to meet up with some family friends who my mother and sister had stayed with last summer and who had just recently visited back home in Lancaster and NYC. In Frankfurt, we were met at the train by Jean-Jacques who took us on the commuter rail (S-Bahn) out to their home in the suburbs. There we met his wife, Helena, and daughter, Natasha. They were fantastic hosts! They cooked dinner for us (Vegetarian, too), set us up with a fold out bed, and told us all about the area. They had just been traveling in France, and had lots of fresh cheese to eat before it went bad, so we had a more traditionally French dinner with a main course, salad after, then cheese and wine, then dessert (what luxury..). Before bed we had possible itineraries for at least 2 or 3 days, full bellies, and dry, not breaking down, not tent accommodations. Fantastic!

Amsterdam wandering (Jeremy)

Despite our late return the night before, the sun heated up our tent enough that we were up and “awake” by 9:30 the next morning. Feeling a bit spent, we leisurely got downtown and went in search of the zoo. The campsite store clerk told us admission was probably around 10 euros, but that advice was accompanied with a dose of “oh man. The zoo. That’s cool man. You’re going to watch the monkeys. Wow. Nice.” So we weren’t particularly surprised when the admission was a prohibitive 18 euros.

Along the way, we stopped at a grocery store for a greek salad lunch and were about the check out when we realized we only had 3.73 between us and that was including all our 1 and 2 cent pieces. We double checked prices and figured out that what we had would cost 3.59, so we went through and handed the clerk a big handful of change with a sincere apology. She counted everything up and then handed us back the 15 or so cents in 1 and 2 cent coins that we needed to meet the total and told us that they don’t accept them. Downtrodden, we offered to put something back, but she just let us take everything, so it worked out. As soon as we left the store, we realized that we didn’t have a fork though, so we were lucky to find a small prepared food market a few blocks later that gave us plastic ware. We spent the rest of the day walking throughout the city some more, with a rainy respite on the roof of a huge ship-shaped museum called "Nemo." We also finally found some delicious Mexican food to fix our cravings.

We got back while the trams were still running and found that the back pole of our tent had collapsed in the storm. The rainfly was still over everything, so nothing got wet, but upon further inspection, the pole had shattered at one of the ends that fit into the metal joints. Not too much pole was lost though, so we were able to simply reinsert the broken end into the joint and it worked again.

Amsterdam and its horrible late night buses (Jeremy)

The days in Amsterdam blur together (as I guess that days in Amsterdam should..). We spent a lot of time just wandering the city and taking in the sites. We found Anne Frank’s house and the accompanying long line to pay 8.50 per person to see it and continued on towards a large flower market on the south side of the city. Near there, we found the crowded shopping district where they were distributing free bags of Lays Paprika flavor chips (tasty!). We spent the afternoon playing card games, picnicking, and lounging in one of the large city parks. There was one entertaining disturbance where a guy on the other side of the river was running from police (we think..) and was tackled. A huge crowd formed around the ensuing tussle and although we couldn’t really see, everyone on our side of the river was also standing up trying to catch a glimpse of the action. Police cars quickly arrived and everything quieted down again.

As dusk arrived, we made our way back to the cheap bar district for some pizza and beers. In the home of Heinekin, they sometimes serve it from the tap at 0° C in frosted glasses which they intuitively call “Heinekin Extra Cold.” This process actually makes Heinekin taste pretty good. We tipsily made our journey back through the red light district where we overheard gems of conversation such as “I asked her if she’d love me long time and she said she’ll love me twenty minutes.” Amsterdam brings out the classiest.

We were too late to catch a tram back that night, so we got on the night bus. This would, in theory, be a helpful service allow late nights downtown followed by safe transit back home. However, it’s more of a tax and punishment for being out late. First, our tram tickets weren’t valid on the bus, so instead of ~1 euro, we paid 3.50 each. And then it proceeded to take the most circuitous route through the city with sudden stops, lots of bucking, and hot, crowded, standing-room-only accommodation. All this left me feeling a bit queasy and Becky feeling bad enough that we got off about half way to the campsite and walked the rest of the way.

Amsterdam! (J & B)

We took a long overnight train ride from Switzerland to Amsterdam. It started out sleepless and uneventfully enough, but that changed on our second train from northern Germany to Amsterdam. About an hour into the ride, our car of the train started to get stuffy and warm, and the staff apologetically told us that the air conditioning was broken and offered free drinks. Great. But then, 30 minutes after that, the train stopped abruptly between stations. We sat for a while, with the car getting hotter and hotter, and then finally there was an announcement (in German, Dutch, and finally broken English) that said “The train does not work. We cannot go forward or backward. We try reset.” We waited a few minutes more while the lights turned off and on, the engine turned off and on, and nothing was fixed. A new announcement told us that the train was truly broken, and that another train was coming to tow us back to the station. So, about a hot half hour after that they finally towed us backward a station, where we had to catch a bus to another station, then a train to Amsterdam.

Finally, we arrived and set up our campsite in the very crowded Zeeburg Camping area in the Amsterdam suburbs. Tents were set up as close to on top of one another as possible. We found a place for our tent with just a little breathing room and set up, thankful the forecasted rain was holding off. We took the tram back to the city then in search of Mexican food (we had wanted it for weeks and saw there was a Mexican restaurant on wikitravel). Once we got to the city, though, we started out by walking through the Chinatown area and changed our mind, getting delicious Thai food instead. We then wandered the city, got some drinks from the supermarket, and sat alongside the canal to drink them (As we sat there, two guys came up to the boat next to us, loaded it up with alcohol and audio equipment, and motored away blaring Michael Jackson songs).

So a note on the famed Amsterdam Red Light District, “coffee shop” atmosphere, etc: It’s pretty much what you hear. Our campground was mostly filled with an interesting mix of stoners (our direct neighbors appeared not to leave their campsite and started smoking when they got up and only stopped as they went to bed.) and frat boys. There are coffee shops scattered throughout the downtown area which serve actual coffee as well as marijuana. They are strictly regulated and don’t serve alcohol or tobacco though. The red light district is full of shops and theatres and has many ladies in their red-lit windows. It’s an experience. The crowd is pretty diverse with some jocky kids flirting with the ladies, lots of people standing by the canals and just watching to see what happens, and most just sort of walking the streets trying to “experience Amsterdam” without any desire to partake of the “wares”.

Switzerland (Becky)

Our plans after Venice were vague - we thought we would head east towards eventually Prague and Vienna, maybe spending some time on the beautiful Croatian beaches that we saw advertised on a Venetian bus. But, looking at the map, we realized that we had no good time picked out or easy connections to Switzerland or the Alps. So we changed plans and decided to head there instead, to a town called Grindelwald that was recommended by the first result of a Google search on "hiking Switzerland." We really do our research before heading places, as you can tell.

We wasted the day relaxing around our campground and the neighboring towns. In Maestre, we searched for a while and eventually found the Pam supermarket, where we bought a bunch of food for sandwiches and trail mix. We made and ate the sandwiches in a square outside the shopping complex, and got a surprising number of strange looks from the locals (apparently draining a package of mozzarella cheese over the public trashcan isn't normal?).

That evening, we took a train to Bologna and then an overnighter to Interlaken, Switzerland. The second train was delayed and expensive, 50 euros with our rail passes, but did make up for a bit by having couchettes where we could at least sleep for part of the night. They also gave us bottled water and packaged breakfast, but after our experiences on the Moroccan trains, we were afraid to eat them until leaving the train in case there was an astronomical charge (there wasn't, of course - they were free).

We arrived into Interlaken and then transferred towards Grindelwald in the early morning. This was the first overnight rail trip to reveal abruptly different scenery - in place of the Italian villas and farmlands, there were huge snowcapped mountains and stereotypical Swiss chalets.

Grindelwald was small, pretty, and incredibly tourism-driven. The prices were astronomical for everything from souvenirs to restaurants to groceries (all in Swiss francs, which are less than euros.. but about the same as US dollars..). And the vast majority of people we saw were above the age of 40. We walked to a campground halfway through the town, which sat at the bottom of a mountain along a rapidly flowing river, and set up camp there. Then we hiked on what was called the "Easy Trail," but that actually went up a very steep, sunny incline for the first hour and a half. Eventually it evened out and got cooler as we entered a forest and neared the altitude of the lower snowy peaks. We walked up to a few small towns along the route of a ski lift / chalet, enjoyed a view from somewhere near the top of a smaller mountain, and then headed back down as rain clouds threatened and biting black flies started to swarm around us.

We couldn't afford to eat out anywhere in the town, so we got cream cheese and bread that resembled bagels at the grocery store. We ate it back at the campsite as it thunderstormed (no major tent flooding this time, at least) and we tried to decide where to go next. Our decision: Prague and Vienna. But then we got an email from Jeremy's family friends in Germany, inviting us to visit next week. Our new destination: Amsterdam for a few days, then visiting our friends near Frankfurt.